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Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media stand-up given by the Financial Secretary, Mr Henry Tang, on the latest unemployment rate at CGO West Wing lobby this (May 18) afternoon:
Financial Secretary: The unemployment situation remained stable in the latest quarter, from February to April. The unemployment rate has moderately declined by 0.1 percentage point to 7.1%. The underemployment rate remains the same at 3.4%. During the same period, the number of unemployed persons stood at 249,000, which is a 500 persons reduction. The labour market sentiment remains fairly buoyant. In April, the Labour Department successfully helped 7,000 people find new jobs. This is a record high job placement. In April, vacancies (received by the Labour Department) from the private sectors stood at 23,000, which means more than 1,000 vacancies per working day. As I have said many times before, we are facing a challenge of a structural unemployment due to economic restructuring. In addition to that, in the next few months, there will be fresh graduates from school, and that would add pressure to the labour market. The Government pledges that we would continue to work with all sectors of our community through revitalising our economy, attracting inward investment in order to improve employment situation.
Question: Do you expect significant improvements towards the end of the year?
Financial Secretary: We remain cautiously optimistic that the employment situation will not deteriorate significantly, simply because the recovery remains very broad-based. We are still not too concerned that we would not be able to meet our target of 6% real growth this year. And we remain cautiously optimistic about the economic situation in the near term.
Question: Last year for example people took to the streets because of unemployment. Do you expect the reduction in unemployment rate will reduce the pro-democracy protest?
Financial Secretary: I think that is a very leading and convoluted question actually. People take to the streets for various reasons, whether it is because of aspiration for democracy, or whether they just feel angry with certain government policies, or whether they just want to vent their grievances for other measures. I would not like to link unemployment with the number of people who go on the streets because there can be a combination of other reasons.
Question: Do you have expectation that the lower rate of unemployment this year will be reflected in a higher level of satisfaction of the public?
Financial Secretary: I would say that a recovering economy will give people a little more confidence in themselves and the fact that we have seen increases in the number in retail sales as well as investment is a reflection that people are more confident of their future and a little bit happier about the economy.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, May 18,2004
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